{"id":687,"date":"2011-07-05T07:58:33","date_gmt":"2011-07-05T11:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/?p=687"},"modified":"2011-07-18T10:52:22","modified_gmt":"2011-07-18T14:52:22","slug":"im-an-amateur-and-always-will-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/05\/im-an-amateur-and-always-will-be\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m an Amateur (and always will be)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/a>

nope-not him<\/p><\/div>\n

John Locke is getting a lot of attention lately.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

No, not the philosopher\u2014that\u2019s the history blog down the block. Not the character on \u2018Lost\u2019 either. I\u2019m talking about the man who just joined Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Charlaine Harris, Lee Child, Suzanne Collins and Michael Connelly\u00a0as the eighth author (and only independent) to sell a million ebooks at Amazon.<\/p>\n

At one point Locke had seven of the top ten Kindle books on the list. All written in the past year.<\/p>\n

And now he\u2019s written a book called \u2018How I Sold One Million eBooks in 5 Months!\u2019 Guess what it\u2019s about. Go ahead\u2026I\u2019ll wait.<\/p>\n

I mean, you have to give the man credit for directness. He could have called it \u2018How I Did It\u2019\u2014that\u2019s shorter by a few words but it doesn\u2019t capture the brazen avarice of the real thing.<\/p>\n

And the book is the subject of all sorts of talk and comment among writers online, because sure, we\u2019d all like to sell a million books.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

him<\/p><\/div>\n

Locke\u2019s background, it turns out, is in niche marketing and he says himself that this is what has driven his success. He admits to being a mediocre writer\u2026but then adds that doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s right\u2026if your ultimate goal is his, the one he\u2019s achieved.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that he runs his business ruthlessly or efficiently that gets me\u2014that’s the only available way to do business. It\u2019s that he views his own books as a commodity. The stories are contrived to facilitate a marketing and sales strategy.<\/p>\n

Find a niche, figure out what that audience wants and give it to them. Locke says flatly \u201cI write solely for the entertainment of that specific audience. I write the types of scenes they like, and avoid the types of scenes I know they don\u2019t like. If I\u2019m\u00a0 not sure about a scene,\u00a0 I sneak it in and get feedback from my readers after the fact, to make sure I\u2019m staying true to the stories and characters they\u2019ve come to enjoy reading.\u201d If they don\u2019t like it, no more of that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Andrew Cuomo (or Mitt Romney - again)<\/p><\/div>\n

So, thousands of writers around the world are reading those words today like they were the\u00a0Gospel. And why not? There\u2019s nothing new here, really. It\u2019s the triumph of the focus group. It\u2019s America today and you can\u2019t argue with it, at least from the standpoint of utility. The kind of marketing that gave us Jalape\u00f1o Pringles, the new Andrew Cuomo and seventeen shows that are just like American Idol.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ew.<\/p>\n

The rule in writing for decades has been that 90% of the money is made by the top 6% of writers. However, from the time of Dumas and Dickens to Fitzgerald and Mailer, books were enough of a mainstream entertainment to support the dreamers as well as the commercial monsters. The ebook market might go there again someday soon. But not quite yet.<\/p>\n

Other than those fortunate few, the mass of novelists have\u00a0traditionally\u00a0<\/span>survived either by working in academia and writing in their (relatively copious) free time–or by\u00a0grinding out six detective novels, six sci-fi\u2019s and six historical romances each year, turning them out like a one-employee factory. Characters introduced by page thirty; major plot point around page seventy, climax at one-hundred ten and out by one-sixty. Next.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Michael Douglas in 'Wonder Boys' (note the typewriter!)<\/p><\/div>\n

The academic’s books will surely be harrowing (critics\u00a0<\/span>love<\/em><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>harrowing) and you can be sure there won\u2019t be any killer robots from outer space or former Soviet mindreader spies battling international conspiracies in the catacombs of Rome. <\/span><\/p>\n

There will, on the other hand, be lots of strangely charismatic writing teachers with bad marriages, midlife crises and affairs with their students (if you can\u2019t do violence, it\u2019s got to be sex). But they’re<\/span>\u00a0professionals because their job status depends on being published, and on the prestige of the book\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n

The genre factory writers, on the other hand, \u00a0are professionals like all the rest of us\u2014hamsters on the wheel. They\u2019ll be homeless if they don\u2019t produce, keep producing and keep selling. Their livelihood depends on making deadline and doing what Locke talks about, serving the audience\u2019s need for entertainment, for more of the same.<\/p>\n

Both approaches\u00a0share the same weakness: the story is an afterthought. It\u2019s the means to the end, not the end itself. For the academic, professionalism is justifying the teaching job. For the series writer, professionalism is writing the same formula over and over, as long as the books sell. Anything else takes too much time and they truly don\u2019t have time.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m an amateur. And hopefully always will be. I\u2019ve got a dayjob with some major disadvantages – the hours are insane, the prestige level is below the floor, you\u2019re treated by your own company as an inconvenience. But I\u2019ll keep at it till I drop if I have to, if I can\u2019t make a (modest) living writing my own way.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Herman Melville - 'Moby Dick' didn't sell out it's first printing in his lifetime<\/p><\/div>\n

The amateur\u2019s story is magic. At least it has the chance to be. A little ragged, a little messy and aiming for something more than going from Point A to Point B. It\u2019s a process of discovery, a journey instead of simply reaching a destination. It comes from the heart and the stomach and the spleen. There\u2019s something a bit mystical to the process, if not always the result (they\u2019re never as good as you hope they\u2019ll be when you start).<\/p>\n

Affecting stories grow out of one person\u2019s deepest yearnings, yearnings and wish-fulfillment or fear deep enough that the storyteller sometimes doesn\u2019t understand the story until years after it\u2019s finished and gone. Those are the stories that touch us, that we carry around inside from childhood or young adulthood, that speak to us when our own real lives call for a little heroism or some forgiveness of our own weakness.<\/p>\n

Those kinds of stories force us beyond our boundaries. Nobody in a focus group ever voted in favor of moving out of their comfort zone. But when you make people want<\/em> to, when you can sweep them up and carry them away, they remember.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m no snob. Readers need escapism. The most contrived formulaic pulp serves a purpose and a good one. But anything that confirms this society\u2019s conviction that all is commerce, that the only things that count are the things you can count, is part of the problem, not the solution.<\/p>\n

We need more things that sing, that break the barrier and the mold, that show a human being\u2019s heart and mind were at work.\u00a0<\/span>Things that aren\u2019t perfectly planned-out commercial enterprises. That show an uneven seam here and there. Things a machine couldn\u2019t (or wouldn\u2019t choose to) do better\u2014or even the same.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a place you don\u2019t get by way of market research or commercial strategy. That\u2019s a place you don\u2019t get following the model of a culture that\u2019s become professional wrestling.<\/p>\n

You get there being decidedly un<\/em>professional.<\/p>\n

So count me as an amateur. I suspect the world needs more of us. The professionals are running the place into the ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Locke is getting a lot of attention lately. No, not the philosopher\u2014that\u2019s the history blog down the block. Not the character on \u2018Lost\u2019 either. I\u2019m talking about the man who just joined Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Charlaine …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[34,25,52,254,18,19,26,31,8],"class_list":["post-687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-art","tag-business","tag-critics","tag-e-books","tag-meaning","tag-mystery","tag-publishing","tag-story","tag-writing-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":787,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions\/787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}